Paganini 24 Caprices

Lisa Jacobs

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The Paganini Caprices don’t always offer a particularly agreeable listening experience. They are virtuoso pieces that are designed to show off the capabilities of the violin and the technical prowess of the violinist. The results are often displeasing to the average listener due to the ugly double stopping, excruciating leaps, comical pizzicato effects and hair raising harmonics. They are amazing studies and represent the technical Mount Everest of the violin repertoire but are they musically satisfying? Well quite often the answer is no but Lisa Jacobs could well convert a few listeners to the cause with this remarkable new recording. A clue to her general approach can be seen from the timings. Taking a few recordings at random: Ricci/Vox 61 mins; Kaler/Naxos 79 mins and Spivakovsky/Omega 79 mins. Lisa Jacobs clocks in at 87 minutes and her recording spills over to 2 CDs. The benefit of these generally relaxed tempi in the new Jacobs set is that the music has time to sing. She concentrates on the musicality and cantabile qualities that many of the caprices possess. The fast, virtuoso passages and special effects aren’t played as a showy firework display to amaze the listener. They are presented as part of the narrative and, surprise, surprise, there is hardly an ugly note to be heard. The violin always projects a gentle, beautiful tone but make no mistake, the technique is immaculate. Other players may generate more excitement and make the caprices sound more demanding in terms of virtuosity but this young lady plays them with proper musicality and charm whilst also being technically flawless. She’s in complete control and she actually makes the music sound relatively easy to play. That is some achievement.

This set completely overshadows many a version by star players from an earlier generation. Maybe some will criticise the approach and expect more in terms of sheer excitement from these devilish little miniatures but I for one love the musicality on display. This goes to the top of the list of my own personal recommended recordings.John Whitmore, Musicweb International, UK, December 2018

Musically Jacobs is virtually in a class of her ownLisa Jacobs, by contrast, emphasises cantabile purity, so that even the flightiest of Paganini’s finger-breaking miniatures emerges miraculously as though it was being sung. As a result, having negotiated the merciless ricochets of No. 5 using the original bowings (many players opt for separate bows) No. 6 sounds less like an excruciatingly demanding étude in accompanied melody than an operatic scena with a compelling emotional narrative. No less persuasive is Jacobs’s velvet cushioning of No. 2’s awkward string-crossing leaps, thereby enabling its melodic chicanery to emerge as a seamless flow, and the withering-laughter descents of No. 11’s outer sections, which are inflected with just the right degree of temporal lassitude. Even the horncalls of Nos 9 and 14, which are normally despatched in martialistic strict tempo, sound alluringly seductive here. No 17 with its rippling downwards scales and high-octane middlesection octaves emerges as a poetic gem in its own right, while rounding off the set, each variation of No. 24 is imbued with its own distinctive musical personality. Some may crave a greater sense of visceral excitement in this of all violin works, although musically Jacobs is virtually in a class of her own’★★★★ Haylock, BBC Music Magazine, UK, October 2018

It was surely only a matter of time before the Dutch violinist Lisa Jacobs recorded Paganini, after the assured, personality-rich account she gave in 2016 of the concertos of Paganini’s Baroque violin virtuoso forebear, Pietro Locatelli. What she’s come up with here is a strong offering, too: distinctiveness again, within an overall approach that sits mostly on the gentler, beautiful-toned end of the scale, as her bouncing, mellow-toned No 1 sets up. Although not entirely, as you’ll hear through the peasanty fire she brings to No 5. Also worth highlighting is the thought-through clarity of her part-voicing: returning to No 1, listen to the extent to which its lower-note melody feels like a sustained musical line. Tempo-wise, Jacobs occupies roughly the same comfortable, instinctive-feeling ball park as other recent recordings have done, achieving the desired impressions of speed and space without plunging into extremes. Indeed, measure and subtlety are among these readings’ chief overall qualities. Take the sombre No 4 in C minor: opening pure-toned, vibrato present but by no means throbbing heavily, where she trusts the forte marking of those low-register octave interjections to emerge naturally without too much additional pressure from herself. Other pleasures are the whisperiest pianissimo she brings to the start of ‘The Trill’, No 6, and the sophisticated mini-swells she brings in No 24 to the second variation’s acciaccatura’d semiquaver groupings, making them sound like little flicks of an impish devil’s tail. I suspect that if it’s beauty I’m after then Ehnes will still come out on top for me; the cleanly ringing purity of his sound and the sheer finesse of his technique are just too good, and are also the perfect contrast to the Perlman sitting in my back pocket for when I fancy a bit of living life dangerously. That said, I also suspect I will yet be revisiting Jacobs when I fancy beauty of a slightly softer hue. Charlotte Gardner, Gramophone, UK, October 2018